Wandering Chile

We spent the last day or so waiting for a window to fly. The news now is that it could be Saturday at the earliest, getting very anxious now.

There are dogs everywhere here, running around in packs, eating garbage and generally doing other dog things (like making more dogs).

This dog found a good patch of grass to deposit a present for everyone in the restaurant.

We decided to spend the time waiting in Torres del Paine, a national park here in Chile (southern pantagonia). It was beautiful, took over 6 hours of driving, but was worth it (better than sitting at hotel waiting.

Here is a picture of me hiking up the mountain to see the Towers. It was a long hard hike, but the scenery was worth it.

As you can tell, my razor is sitting with my antartic gear packed on the plane, think I will have to go get a new one to get me by. By the way, I will have to go to laundromat when we get back to Puenta Arenas and settled in again, things are getting stinky here.

Here is another view of the clouds rolling off the mountains.

For anyone interested, the Torres del Paine were formed 12 million years ago when a Giant piece of the earths mantel pushed up through the ground forcing the bedrock high into the sky.

A friend of ours from Ireland, Mark, is pictured here in the Torres del Paine National Park. He has insisted that all pictures of him be cropped out to only include his face, and nothing else, so here he is in front of a very scenic backdrop.

He is also running for charity so I thought I would at least include a short blurb about him. Will post more mug shots of him with the good stuff cropped out as the adventure progresses.

Will try and post more later.

Delayed Again

Uuuuggghhhh, another delay, this one is much longer. Sounds like Patriot Hills, our destination in Antartica, received 22cm of snow the past few days and they will need some time to clear the runway (once it stops snowing). The runway, by the way, is simply a smooth patch of ice where we will land, nothing so convienient as a terminal there.

It will probably be Thursday until we have any chance to go. They will work hard to get it ready becuase there are still some climbers and others stranded down there until the plane can get in.

We have decided to take a trip to the national park here (4-6 hour drive) and see some penguins and glaciers. Ten of us decided to rent a van and make the trek. Promises to be quite the international van so it should be a good place to bring up politics and religion or any other sensitive subject. The group of people going are actually very easy going (you would have to be to voluntarily go to the South Pole and run a marathon).

The delay is making another runner (Don from the US) kinda nervous as he is on his final marathon of the 7 continents and if we get delayed over 5 days he will miss his window of getting into the Guiness Book of World Records as the quickest run of all 7 continents (the record is 30 days now I think).

This sitting around waiting is the hardest part so far, as it is windy and rainy here.

Will try and update from the road if access is available.

Map of Antartica

Think I will go to the outdoor store here now and look for a big map of Antartica. This town, Punta Arenas, is small, but there is a large proportion of outdoor shops here. It must be because of the backpacking and wilderness down here (Pantagonia) that creates such a demand for high quality gear.

I could have waited until I got down here to gear up.

Card game scheduled for tonite. We have decided for everyone to bring currency from their own country, so we can swap it out and play with money we don´t really know the value of. This should make any wager a wager in itself due to my poor monetary conversion skills.

Delayed Again

We went to the 4 PM meeting at our hotel and found out the following:

Weather at Patriot Hills:

*30 mile per hour winds gusting to over 35 mph
*50 meter visibility
*Snow

In short, we are not going until tomorrow at the earliest. We were told to wait for a 6:30 AM phone call, and if that does not arrive we are told to attend a 10 AM meeting.

Mike has come into the 20th century and started a blog also to update his family and friend. You can read his blog by going to http://mikeketchmark.blogspot.com/

I will try and upload some images later as it sounds like we will have some time on our hands tonite and possibly tommorow.

Sitting Around Waiting

Six thirty this morning came and went with no phone call, this allowed me to sleep in a bit. The next scheduled time was 10 AM, which also came and went. Apparently the weather is kinda bad down there and not suitable for flying.

Talked with Brent (the race director) and it sounds like the weather is cold (of course) with a 25 knot cross wind and 1 kilometer of visibility (I am assuming this is bad for flying).

We were told to meet again at 4 PM to get an additional update. From my understanding, we are now on standby until we go, a call could come in at any time, even during the night, and we will be off. This also means that we could land, and if the weather is favorable, put on our running shoes and start the race.

Never thought I would say this, but I kinda miss the smoking ban in bars and restaurants in the US. Every time we go and get a bite to eat, we come back smelling like an ashtray, apparently, every citizen of Punta Arenas smokes.... a lot....

Pretty certain I have been through every channel on the TV at least 60 times so I will probably try and rustle up a card game while we sit around waiting.

Oh, by the way, the hotel we are staying at is right on the coast and the wind (the cold wind) is fierce, afraid this might be a prelude as to the conditions further south.

It is also confirmed that I am gonna line up and try the 100k race, good thing I brought some Advil (I am also considering a bottle of stout whiskey) to help with the recovery.

Will update later as time permits.

Flight Out

Scheduled to get a wake up call at 6:30 AM to let us know if we are on or off for a 10 AM flight. Tough thing is that is 3:30 AM KC time, which my body still seems to be following. Finally got some free time tonite (and an open computer) to post again.

Spent the entire day with briefings and equipment checks, had to go to the logistics office to pick up my sleeping bag and boots (they are huge). They really want to make sure everyone is prepared for the worst case and they go to great lengths to make sure everyone is ready.

We will ride in a Russian made jet, and sit in the military style jumpseats on the way in. We will need to carry our cold weather stuff on the plane as our luggage is already being loaded. We will have to gear up prior to landing, cuz once we are down, we will be on our own.

Talked to a guy today who is going down when we do, he is going to drive to the Pole of Inexcessability - This is the point that is furthest from any other land in the world, not really sure how they will find it if it is called the Pole of Inexcessability, but he seemed pretty confident. He pointed it out on a huge map of Antartica and it is probably 800-1000 miles from where we will be at... promises to be a pretty neat trip. Apparently there are several poles:

1. Where the lines of Longitude and Latitude meet.
2. The magnetic pole.
3. The actual pole... The focus point that the earth revolves around.
4. The Pole of inexcessability.

And I am sure there are others that I do not know about.

Anyway, they are driving for over 20 days to several of the Poles, where they will then be met by a plane, which will trade them out with some scientists who will drive back and study the snow or something (proving that no two flakes are alike). Was an interesting conversation however. I have decided I would like to have his job.

Also decided to run the 100k (60 mile) race after the marathon. Not sure how that will go, as 60 miles is a fair distance to run (or walk) but I would hate to go down there and not at least try it.

Gotta go and get some sleep now.

Ice Marathon

Been asked a lot about the schedule for the race:

* December 8th - Arrive at Punta Arenas, Chile
* December 9th - Pre-Departure briefings
* December 10th - Flight to marathon location at Patriot Hills, Antarctica
* December 11th - Acclimatisation & Test Run
* December 12th - Antarctic Ice Marathon
* December 13th - Rest Day
* December 14th - 80 South Half-Marathon
* December 15th - Antarctic 100k
* December 16th - Conclusion of 100k (if necessary)
* December 17th - Sight Seeing
* December 18th - Return flight to Punta Arenas, Chile
* December 19th - Departure to homeland

Quite a few days on the ice....

Been feeling kinda wimpy due to the current field of runners, most are scheduled to do the Full Marathon and then the 100k two days later. I hope I don't get a renewed sense of bravado and attempt the 100k. We'll see when I get there. It looks like the last time they ran a 100k there it took some of the runners close to 22 hours to complete (sounds interesting). Wonder if I will get hungry.....

Got a satellite phone and have been working on setting that up for communication back home. Hopefully I will get the technical glitches worked out and be able to post from the ice, we'll see, I might be to tired from the 100k to post anyway.